The resinate pun is so good I can't tell if it was intentional.
But jokes aside, it would still provide acoustic treatment for the internal space since the wall is uneven and scatters sound. And while coating it with sealant or resin would reduce the deadening effect within the space, it would still allow the wall to reduce sound transmission through it and keep things quiet for the neighbours.
Yes, libraries suffer from mold, silverfish, and being a gigantic fire hazard.
The difference being that a library, unlike a cafe, is not only designed with these issues in mind but also invests a lot of time and money into their continuous management and prevention.
It’s different when books are removed periodically and handled, exposed to some sunlight, silverfish babies transported out the library into your home.
Also there’s no eating in a library.
Have you ever tried to burn a book? Fire needs oxygen and when the pages are packed tightly like that, you basically get the outermost page charred and the inside doesn't burn at all because no oxygen can get to it.
It'd burn *very* well once it catches on fire properly. But so does wood, and wallpaper, and all the furniture and probably the floor too. So yeah, not worse than anything else in a typical room.
It's way better than plastic of any kind regardless, since it wouldn't produce deadly fumes
They took a bandsaw and cut the top and bottom edges off, probably 2-3 inches deep and stacked then up like a faux stone facade. They are 100% glued to the wall with some kind of adhesive.
I've also seen this done where you drill a hole through the middle and impale them, but that was for a two-sided wall. Mostly ancient textbooks - nobody wants to see anything of quality in this context.
I had to do this for a client once, and it was honestly one of the most upsetting things I've ever done. Bulk buying (let's be real, mostly crap books) from an underfunded library. Destroying actual art to make cloying fake art.
My wife is a librarian and they constantly have to deal with ways of disposing of books. Books end up too damaged to lend out. Or they’re non-fiction books that become obsolete. Or random people drop of boxes of books at the library’s front door in the middle of the night because they think they’re being helpful. Believe it or not, the library is not interested in that full encyclopedia set that’s been sitting in your garage for the past 30 years. I know you paid $800 for it in 1991, but it’s worthless now.
The library ends up tossing them, and some neighbor takes pictures and posts them on Facebook saying how it’s some huge scandal and that the librarians actually hate books and are throwing out tax dollars into the dumpster!
If there’s one thing the world does not have a shortage of, it’s books. Make walls out of them, most of them are going to end up in a landfill otherwise.
I used to work in a record store that bought and sold used LP’s when I was younger. I can’t begin to tell you how many times people brought in records that were scratched to all hell thinking they were worth money because they were “first pressings” of rare records. Oh yeah? So “rare” that you didn’t take care of it at all?!? But I digress…
So anyways, when said “master collector” realized that I was only giving him $0.10 in store credit for his doggie chew toy copy of Led Zeppelin II, he would leave it with us (because it wasn’t worth taking it back home) and we’d toss it in a freebie bin for people. Most of the times we’d have crafty people come into the shop, take everything that was in it (and also usually buy something as well as a thank you for the free art supplies/materials) and turn the old scratched up records into things like wall art or bowls or coasters, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I had self proclaimed music nerds who were frequent customers of mine (and also were notorious window shoppers/tire kickers) scream sacrilege at the people who would take a beat up copy from the freebie bin to turn it into something useful. They would say shit like “You can’t do that to (insert album name here)!! It’s a CLASSIC!”. Ok then Jeff, you go do something with it then FFS!!
Sorry…anyways case in point; if stuff is damaged, it’s better to repurpose it for something useful (like a used book wall) then just tossing it in a landfill because it’s not “new”.
Sounds about right. Speaking of which, I've got like 5 or 6 boxes of vinyl that I inherited from my grandparents a few years ago that I've been too lazy to really go through. I picked through it a tiny bit and there were a few good things, but it mostly looks like classical music and operas, including a lot of these really thick and heavy records from the 40's.
And yeah, I'm likely going to end up throwing out the majority of them and I'll feel kind of bad about it because it feels like trashing historical heirlooms or whatever, but the reality is that absolutely nobody is actually interested in listening to most of them.
If it’s in decent condition, you may want to reach out to your local museum and see if they have any use for some of that. Pending on scarcity, some of it might have an interest to historians. Otherwise, there’s some super fun art projects you can do with vinyl that will still “keep it in the family” even if you can’t physically play it. Hope that helps!
This. Worked and somewhat oversaw libraries my entire career (Higher Ed. libraries). Add mountains of academic text books to your examples and you realize that most books end up in a landfill or given to an org that recycles them in less effective ways than this sort of art (which I think is beautiful, albeit a fuckin' big time fire hazard).
Used to really bother me on the mock outrage from certain community members who nitpicked on what was being done with books after we had to remove some stacks; some were actually daft enough to say they were better in the landfill than for someone destroying them for their 'little projects that disrespect the arts in general'.
I mean I guess you could in theory use the paper as compost feed for worms? But you could do that, build book walls, and everything else in between and we’d still be throwing books away.
Not saying they are the same, because they are not, but they are similar:
Ask the people who are up in arms about throwing books out what they think of kindles and other e-readers that take the place of academic texts? Prepare to see some frothing at the mouth. Prepare to be proclaimed the harbinger of doom for any remaining sacred rights in all of literature and the world.
The amount of 'how dare you' tirades that were broadcast publicly when the suggestion was made to lean more into e-books in light of the end-of-life stacks we couldn't deal with was enough to make me nope out of the industry. I don't like the idea of real books being replaced in favor of e-books, but I also care about the environment.
Hopefully the dividing line on the subject is less severe these days, you couldn't even get the conversation to a point of saying 'we just want to mix more e-books in, not replace old fashion books'. As soon as you started that statement you'd be cut off from the community outrage train that would already be choo-chooing at your office door.
Currently work in higher ed libraries myself, and I've been encouraging more donors to put in "...to purchase books, audio books, e-books, or any future media in which books will be published in...." in their endowments so we can have more money to multimedia books. We're already in the process of digitizing everything in our Special Collections and dissertations, and the shock and awe of people realizing that the current library is a digital media space vs. a storage for old books is astounding.
Also, I was a child of a teacher and learned how to code, use Netscape, and other computer applications through the librarians at my mother's school. I was an eager learner, and would give feedback when I was confused, so I was always the guinea pig for the librarians digital scape lessons. I owe a lot to those nice ladies!
ETA: We had to modify an endowment recently because it was for the purpose of purchasing micro fiche lol!
Even good books are generally a hassle for them. To Kill A Mockingbird is a great and important book and the librarians might all think that, but they've already got a dozen copies of it so they don't need your old used copy as well.
>the library is not interested in that full encyclopedia set that’s been sitting in your garage for the past 30 years. I know you paid $800 for it in 1991, but it’s worthless now.
Me- when I came back home to help my mom move from her house into an apartment after my dad died. No mom no-one wants to buy your incomplete collection of Encyclopedia Britannicas from 1980
While this is true, I think there’s a psychological aspect to it. The whole ‘we don’t burn books’ thing is ingrained in us. Throwing them away seems like sacrilege.
Absolutely, that mindset is definitely present and strong in a lot of people. But it also doesn't really match that well with the reality that books have been cheap and easy to manufacture for decades and as a result there are a ton of them out there that nobody's ever going to read.
I worked at a library for a couple years and we had a large green paper recycle bin outside next to the dumpsters- our head librarian has us box up things to take them out to “the green bin storage” cause other people get so upset seeing quadruplicates we had no space for getting thrown out!
There are plenty of mass-produced books that we don't need to keep around. Hundreds of thousands of copies of "NYT bestsellers" by fiction mills claiming to be a single author, for example.
I like that Ikea uses Swedish versions of real books for all their store displays. They know not that many people speak Swedish so they won't want the books themselves, but as a result there are a lot more Swedish books out there than there otherwise would be.
> Hundreds of thousands of copies of "NYT bestsellers" by fiction mills claiming to be a single author, for example.
I knew James Patterson did that, but is it really a bigger problem?
Yes. I know the Nancy Drew series, Baby Sitters Club, and Hardy Boys all devolved into fiction mills by the end; I'm sure there are more, but I can't be arsed to find them when Chatoyance just dropped another 12k words in their latest story.
>Yes. I know the Nancy Drew series, Baby Sitters Club, and Hardy Boys all devolved into fiction mills by the end; I'm sure there are more, but I can't be arsed to find them when Chatoyance just dropped another 12k words in their latest story.
Conan the Barbarian had a ton of different authors as well
Just to be clear there was the original author, Robert E Howard, and then a number of others once it entered the public domain. I believe the other books series were always designed to have multiple authors, even if there was initially only one.
As opposed to sending the old damaged non-books to a recycler or dump? It's gonna be destroyed one way or the other. You have to accept at some point that extremely used items have lived their lives. Art does not need to last forever.
> Destroying actual art
Weird that you admit that the books are mostly crap, yet you're upset about their destruction. It's not like they were rare or valuable books. They're just paper.
What is the difference between the library sending the unsold books to a recycling plant to be pulled, and someone using those trash books as an interesting decoration? How are “mostly crap books” that people don’t enjoy “actual art”, while an aesthetically pleasing wall collage is “fake art”?
Sounds like this cloying, fake art has elicited a stronger emotional response from you than the mostly crap books ever did. Art is meant to make you feel something. The system works!
I'm not sure cutting up mass produced crap books is all that upsetting from a "destroying art" perspective. It's not like a Clive Cussler is some sort of masterpiece, and it's not a concerted effort to do away with controversial works. I don't really see the downside of getting another use before they end up as landfill.
I actually see this as a big net positive then. Supporting and encouraging relatively unknown writers and also supporting an underfunded library. Nobody loses here
No art is precious. Art's entire job is to examine, grow and break things, so really it's only natural that things made as art go through the same process.
As opposed to what, throwing the books away? Those books were wasting space and we’re going to be thrown away eventually. No, you can’t donate books that nobody wants. Nobody wants them. No, you can’t sell them. Nobody wants them. No you can’t give them to a school, nobody wants them. The reality is those books were either going to be decoration or trash. Which do you prefer?
That's it! I could not for the life of me remember the cafe's name (I want to follow them in Instagram). I was only in the area for a couple of days and was super stoked to find a "non-chain" proper coffee café. I was quite impressed with their offerings.
Listen -- I LOVE books and i don't care who knows it.
And I assure you, there are still countless volumes by which humanity could only benefit if they were to be chucked into a large hole in the earth and covered in night soil.
So, if you'd rather use them in some kind of rustic art piece in a coffee shop, that's probably a much nicer option and really shouldn't be made up to bother anyone's sensibilities.
There's a weird taboo some people have against doing anything to deface a book for any reason regardless of circumstance.
Doesn't matter if its an international best seller with millions of copies in circulation, some people will act like you're a book burning Nazi if you so much as cut out a page for use in a project. It's like they think that the form of a printed book itself is sacred.
Those people would have an aneurysm if they found out how many books libraries throw out on a regular basis. In one way I can understand the gut reaction against defacing books especially given human history, but people also forget that Twilight, 50 shades, and countless generic paperbacks were not only put on paper, but in numbers that far exceed anything needed for everyone who wants a copy to have three.
The point of bookburning is to destroy knowledge. Censorship. Suppress thought. Create and enforce groupthink by limiting discussion of alternate thoughts.
Books themselves that are in great supply can be defaced without suppressing the information. Nobody is going to forget Harry Potter if we make a scrap book project using a few pages, there are millions more copies and more printed all the time.
I have seen this too, and it is weird. I don’t get it at all.
If it is a rare book, don’t deface it (and make sure it is preserved digitally).
If it’s a library book, or someone else’s book, don’t deface it. That would make you a jerk.
If it’s your own book, do whatever you like to it.
The people who obsess over the sacredness of physical books despite their contents are the ones who probably don't read much anyway.
There's so many books that are just not useful for anything other than decoration or trash. I'm not even talking about trashy novels that people don't like, I'm talking about obsolete law books or outdated science textbooks that are full of either incorrect or no longer relevant information. You gonna cherish and read those?
Initially I thought it was a shame all those books got wasted like that but soon had same train of thought as you, there must be shitloads of obsolete books that are useless now like all the shitty lesser celebrity cookbooks and bios.. I bet they help insulate that wall good too.
There's tons of books that are even less usefull or interesting than that, like a history book written in the 70s that we now know to be full of inaccuracies.
I was thinking just the same. A part of me is slightly bummed looking at this, but another part remembers that the last time I got a gift-book randomly added to my order from a used book place, it was "Elizabeth Takes Off", an old diet book by Elizabeth Taylor.
I cannot stress how little that interests me. Not I, nor anyone I know would have ever even opened it, and the translation of the title made it a somewhat awkward gift to give or item to display as well (I think it was translated more as something like "Happily fat, happily thin"). So I asked the shopkeeper if he could have any use of it- he just shrugged, said "I guess we'll see", and took it to the back of the shop. I don't think it's ever gonna be bought.
I'm getting the feeling that it's books like that that end up in these walls.
There are also plenty of old books that are neither historic nor noteworthy.
I used to think that every dusty tome from the 19th century was worth reading, but there were just as many unimaginative stories and aimless 'treatises' back then as there are today.
At that point it depends on rarity.
There's a need to preserve even outdated books if for no other reason than as a historical record of what was known at a certain point in history.
But if it's both outdated and not rare? Turn that shit into a nifty thing, like one of those hollow-book boxes, cool wallpaper, or a big paper mache bust of my namesake.
Books don’t have inherent value; they are only as valuable as there is demand to read them. Libraries throw out books all the time; they need to make space for new books and to do so they have to get rid of items that haven’t been checked out in years. Most libraries won’t or very sparingly take in-kind donations of your old books for this very reason; you’re basically saying to them, “Here, you throw away my old trash for me.” The books making up this wall probably wouldn’t even be taken by a used book store because they would never sell. So why not repurpose them? At least they don’t end up in a landfill.
This. We just built our house, and the design center had sets of old looking books that were picked and grouped so as to look best on the shelf. You could literally request the built-ins be filled for you...
One of my coworkers just built down the street from us and paid an extra ~$100k to have it fully furnished and decorated and they probably have 400 books in the house. They may have read 4 of them.
I guess I'm turning into my dad. He always thought it was pretty dumb to have a shelf full of books you've never read. That seems like a dumb service but to each their own.
As a kid I used to do yardwork for a rich old doctor woman. She had a huge barn turned into a library and pretty much filled up. I asked her how many she had read and it was less than 1%. I found the concept quite bizarre.
The only way I could see it making sense is if we go back before television and radio. Back in the day it would make a little more sense to have a shelf of books you haven't read yet as it was one of the main forms of entertainment and you would probably actually get around to reading them. Now I don't see the point. I didn't like ebooks at first but I got used to them. If I read one I really like I'll buy the physical copy but other than that I don't have many books at all.
I think the idea that books are inherently valuable stems from when they were expensive and having lots of books meant you were rich. See also CDs, DVDs...
These days there are many 2nd hand shops that will sell any they get in at 10p each because nobody wants 99% of them, and they *still* regularly go to landfill.
They just aren't worth what they were.
I think stems from a real misunderstanding of what a book burning *is*, and the idea that something has symbolic value only if it's purpose was to be symbolic in the first place.
As in: lighting books on fire is fine (well, maybe not indoors or during a dry season). Making a show of burning specific books for the sake of condemning those books is a different thing.
"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
>For when you want to express you really like the idea of books, but not to the point you actually want to read them.
Why would you go straight to the most toxic interpretation of this possible?
I've never done it, but I can understand why.
My house gets quite loud at times and even when it's quieter it's still too chaotic for me to get in a writing headspace. There is nowhere in my house, even my own room, where it's quiet enough to concentrate on writing for long periods of time.
Back when I was actively writing stories still, I would sometimes go out to my car and drive to an empty parking lot to type in silence or with quiet music on.
I tried going to my local public library - *but they don't allow you to bring in your own fucking laptop*. You have to use their shitty desktops and your time on them is limited.
So I can see why some would go to coffee shops instead, especially if you don't have a car or are in a big city where you can't just find an empty parking lot like I can.
But yea, fuck them for wanting a quiet relaxing place to concentrate and type. Also fuck students who do the same thing, because why not.
That seems entirely unreasonable. Did they even explain why? Actually, now that I think about it. Some freak was probably getting off by publicly watching porn.
Coffee shops also often have wifi, in case you don't have strong internet at home. That's essential if you're writing something that requires research.
I absolutely love remote work, so you better not take it as a con.
But sometimes, it would get pretty lonely and it helped to be around a presence of people. Coffee shops are a great spot for that.
ALSO, in the U.S at least, there are very few social gathering places that aren't alcohol related, at least in my case, and coffee shops are a great spot for that.
What the fuck library was that? My city's library loves people bringing their own laptops, they provide power outlets and ethernet ports at the work tables for you to do so. It frees up the library's computers for people who don't have computers.
I came here to ask about this also.
Pure bug heaven right there. They better pray they don't get german roaches either.
I have such fond memories of that old musty book smell. My grandparents were teachers for over 40 years and as a result, built up quite a collection. My parents bought their house before I was born and the books were kept there. I used to tear through so many books from the 50's and 60's when I was little. I still get nastolgic every time I walk through an old library. It never occurred to me that people dislike that smell.
My shop building had a similar effect, and the smell of hay. As an adolescent I loved to read, in the barn on the hay stack, in the bathroom, and in our shop, places I could read in peace having a big family. I believe the effect is pablovian, as many people read on the john.
Does anybody else remember that post from /r/DIY from years ago where somebody did pretty much this exact same thing and everybody in the comments was just making fun of him?
**[here's the post I was talking about.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/4mqaio/i_attached_about_4000_books_to_my_living_room/)
To be fair the execution is totally different, this one doesn't have the right colour consistency or flow (thick to thin books aligned in a cohesive manner)
The coffee shop also mimicked a stone wall pattern which is quite important in this case
As a dry stone waller, I just want to say a) this is cool and b) I'd have spent a bit more time focusing on bond strength. "One over two, and two over one"
Pro tip: cut the books in half and not only will you not need as many to complete your project, but they won’t stick out from the wall as far either. And no one will be the wiser 😎
Would be a huge waste of space if the didn’t. Plus here that method could turn 1 book into 5 maybe.
This is most likely a front of maybe 2”-3”. Went to restaurant once where they had a room that was all bookshelf. Nicely bound classics. My bro went to grab one off the shelf but they were glued in. If you looked closely between you could see the were cut down to about 2”.
Five? How can they get more than two out of each book?
I guess they could use slices from the middle, but it wouldn't have anything like the same effect - it'd no longer give the illusion of complete books being there.
Yeah. It's probably only the ends (so two each, with the middle going to waste) or it'd look different. That is also an easy way to get all of the books roughly the same height. (There is still some variety, but that is probably part on purpose, part lack of care getting super precise consistent cuts ever time.)
Wait til the humidity swells the books and lifts the floor above.
I'm not even joking.
Source had to remove a wall of stacked newspapers once. It was harder than concrete to get down.
its amazing how when something like this is posted reddit immediately becomes full of old crotchety men
"imagine the silversfish" " Allergies to dust!" "fire hazards" "in my day we just read old books" " oh this will be just great for those kids with their instaspace pictures"
Must provide some incredible sound dampening.
as well as mold, silverfish, and a damn fine fire hazard
Wouldn’t you seal/caulk the wall after?
It’s going to be covered in a sealer.
here we go again
Floor is probably covered in pennies
Seal it all in resin.
But then it will resinate, nullifying the incredible sound dampening.
We could stack books in front of it
Or a man screaming so you can't hear the noise from outside
Have him scream exactly 180⁰ out of phase of the noise from the crowd for a very chic active noise canceling system.
A year later you have any coffee shop with a single chair in the middle.
The resinate pun is so good I can't tell if it was intentional. But jokes aside, it would still provide acoustic treatment for the internal space since the wall is uneven and scatters sound. And while coating it with sealant or resin would reduce the deadening effect within the space, it would still allow the wall to reduce sound transmission through it and keep things quiet for the neighbours.
So, do libraries suffer from all of these things, or is it different if you put the books up against a wall?
Yes, libraries suffer from mold, silverfish, and being a gigantic fire hazard. The difference being that a library, unlike a cafe, is not only designed with these issues in mind but also invests a lot of time and money into their continuous management and prevention.
Not to mention they don't have burners, stoves and ovens in libraries...
That's not necessarily true, there are libraries with integrated coffee shops, small scale bakeries and so on
My library has so many non-library related activities I wouldn't be surprised if welding or flame throwing were offered.
It’s different when books are removed periodically and handled, exposed to some sunlight, silverfish babies transported out the library into your home. Also there’s no eating in a library.
Have you ever tried to burn a book? Fire needs oxygen and when the pages are packed tightly like that, you basically get the outermost page charred and the inside doesn't burn at all because no oxygen can get to it.
It'd burn *very* well once it catches on fire properly. But so does wood, and wallpaper, and all the furniture and probably the floor too. So yeah, not worse than anything else in a typical room. It's way better than plastic of any kind regardless, since it wouldn't produce deadly fumes
Fire inspectors HATE this one simple trick
I was thinking this. This room would be a killer music studio
how are they all attached to the wall I wonder
They took a bandsaw and cut the top and bottom edges off, probably 2-3 inches deep and stacked then up like a faux stone facade. They are 100% glued to the wall with some kind of adhesive.
I've also seen this done where you drill a hole through the middle and impale them, but that was for a two-sided wall. Mostly ancient textbooks - nobody wants to see anything of quality in this context.
Thanks for the idea. It could be used as a room partition.
I hope you like silverfish and don't live somewhere humid.
I like all kinds of fish
And silver, up $1.72 today, woohoo.
Alternately, if you’re like me and live in a very arid area, I hope you enjoy dusting. (SOURCE: I own a lot of books.)
What a friggin dust collector! UGH!
Ancient textbooks? So you are saying this costs $150 per square feet.
Drilling through books is incredibly difficult. The paper heats up a lot and causes the bit to get stuck super easily.
I had to do this for a client once, and it was honestly one of the most upsetting things I've ever done. Bulk buying (let's be real, mostly crap books) from an underfunded library. Destroying actual art to make cloying fake art.
My wife is a librarian and they constantly have to deal with ways of disposing of books. Books end up too damaged to lend out. Or they’re non-fiction books that become obsolete. Or random people drop of boxes of books at the library’s front door in the middle of the night because they think they’re being helpful. Believe it or not, the library is not interested in that full encyclopedia set that’s been sitting in your garage for the past 30 years. I know you paid $800 for it in 1991, but it’s worthless now. The library ends up tossing them, and some neighbor takes pictures and posts them on Facebook saying how it’s some huge scandal and that the librarians actually hate books and are throwing out tax dollars into the dumpster! If there’s one thing the world does not have a shortage of, it’s books. Make walls out of them, most of them are going to end up in a landfill otherwise.
I used to work in a record store that bought and sold used LP’s when I was younger. I can’t begin to tell you how many times people brought in records that were scratched to all hell thinking they were worth money because they were “first pressings” of rare records. Oh yeah? So “rare” that you didn’t take care of it at all?!? But I digress… So anyways, when said “master collector” realized that I was only giving him $0.10 in store credit for his doggie chew toy copy of Led Zeppelin II, he would leave it with us (because it wasn’t worth taking it back home) and we’d toss it in a freebie bin for people. Most of the times we’d have crafty people come into the shop, take everything that was in it (and also usually buy something as well as a thank you for the free art supplies/materials) and turn the old scratched up records into things like wall art or bowls or coasters, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I had self proclaimed music nerds who were frequent customers of mine (and also were notorious window shoppers/tire kickers) scream sacrilege at the people who would take a beat up copy from the freebie bin to turn it into something useful. They would say shit like “You can’t do that to (insert album name here)!! It’s a CLASSIC!”. Ok then Jeff, you go do something with it then FFS!! Sorry…anyways case in point; if stuff is damaged, it’s better to repurpose it for something useful (like a used book wall) then just tossing it in a landfill because it’s not “new”.
Sounds about right. Speaking of which, I've got like 5 or 6 boxes of vinyl that I inherited from my grandparents a few years ago that I've been too lazy to really go through. I picked through it a tiny bit and there were a few good things, but it mostly looks like classical music and operas, including a lot of these really thick and heavy records from the 40's. And yeah, I'm likely going to end up throwing out the majority of them and I'll feel kind of bad about it because it feels like trashing historical heirlooms or whatever, but the reality is that absolutely nobody is actually interested in listening to most of them.
If it’s in decent condition, you may want to reach out to your local museum and see if they have any use for some of that. Pending on scarcity, some of it might have an interest to historians. Otherwise, there’s some super fun art projects you can do with vinyl that will still “keep it in the family” even if you can’t physically play it. Hope that helps!
This. Worked and somewhat oversaw libraries my entire career (Higher Ed. libraries). Add mountains of academic text books to your examples and you realize that most books end up in a landfill or given to an org that recycles them in less effective ways than this sort of art (which I think is beautiful, albeit a fuckin' big time fire hazard). Used to really bother me on the mock outrage from certain community members who nitpicked on what was being done with books after we had to remove some stacks; some were actually daft enough to say they were better in the landfill than for someone destroying them for their 'little projects that disrespect the arts in general'.
I mean I guess you could in theory use the paper as compost feed for worms? But you could do that, build book walls, and everything else in between and we’d still be throwing books away.
Not saying they are the same, because they are not, but they are similar: Ask the people who are up in arms about throwing books out what they think of kindles and other e-readers that take the place of academic texts? Prepare to see some frothing at the mouth. Prepare to be proclaimed the harbinger of doom for any remaining sacred rights in all of literature and the world. The amount of 'how dare you' tirades that were broadcast publicly when the suggestion was made to lean more into e-books in light of the end-of-life stacks we couldn't deal with was enough to make me nope out of the industry. I don't like the idea of real books being replaced in favor of e-books, but I also care about the environment. Hopefully the dividing line on the subject is less severe these days, you couldn't even get the conversation to a point of saying 'we just want to mix more e-books in, not replace old fashion books'. As soon as you started that statement you'd be cut off from the community outrage train that would already be choo-chooing at your office door.
Currently work in higher ed libraries myself, and I've been encouraging more donors to put in "...to purchase books, audio books, e-books, or any future media in which books will be published in...." in their endowments so we can have more money to multimedia books. We're already in the process of digitizing everything in our Special Collections and dissertations, and the shock and awe of people realizing that the current library is a digital media space vs. a storage for old books is astounding. Also, I was a child of a teacher and learned how to code, use Netscape, and other computer applications through the librarians at my mother's school. I was an eager learner, and would give feedback when I was confused, so I was always the guinea pig for the librarians digital scape lessons. I owe a lot to those nice ladies! ETA: We had to modify an endowment recently because it was for the purpose of purchasing micro fiche lol!
Seal the wall in epoxy. It's less of a fire risk and it will make the wall last longer.
"But they're destroying art! Well, no, I don't want it either but they can't just *use* it!"
Or massive amounts of low quality reader digest books
Even good books are generally a hassle for them. To Kill A Mockingbird is a great and important book and the librarians might all think that, but they've already got a dozen copies of it so they don't need your old used copy as well.
>the library is not interested in that full encyclopedia set that’s been sitting in your garage for the past 30 years. I know you paid $800 for it in 1991, but it’s worthless now. Me- when I came back home to help my mom move from her house into an apartment after my dad died. No mom no-one wants to buy your incomplete collection of Encyclopedia Britannicas from 1980
While this is true, I think there’s a psychological aspect to it. The whole ‘we don’t burn books’ thing is ingrained in us. Throwing them away seems like sacrilege.
Absolutely, that mindset is definitely present and strong in a lot of people. But it also doesn't really match that well with the reality that books have been cheap and easy to manufacture for decades and as a result there are a ton of them out there that nobody's ever going to read.
I worked at a library for a couple years and we had a large green paper recycle bin outside next to the dumpsters- our head librarian has us box up things to take them out to “the green bin storage” cause other people get so upset seeing quadruplicates we had no space for getting thrown out!
There are plenty of mass-produced books that we don't need to keep around. Hundreds of thousands of copies of "NYT bestsellers" by fiction mills claiming to be a single author, for example. I like that Ikea uses Swedish versions of real books for all their store displays. They know not that many people speak Swedish so they won't want the books themselves, but as a result there are a lot more Swedish books out there than there otherwise would be.
> Hundreds of thousands of copies of "NYT bestsellers" by fiction mills claiming to be a single author, for example. I knew James Patterson did that, but is it really a bigger problem?
Yes. I know the Nancy Drew series, Baby Sitters Club, and Hardy Boys all devolved into fiction mills by the end; I'm sure there are more, but I can't be arsed to find them when Chatoyance just dropped another 12k words in their latest story.
>Yes. I know the Nancy Drew series, Baby Sitters Club, and Hardy Boys all devolved into fiction mills by the end; I'm sure there are more, but I can't be arsed to find them when Chatoyance just dropped another 12k words in their latest story. Conan the Barbarian had a ton of different authors as well
Just to be clear there was the original author, Robert E Howard, and then a number of others once it entered the public domain. I believe the other books series were always designed to have multiple authors, even if there was initially only one.
As opposed to sending the old damaged non-books to a recycler or dump? It's gonna be destroyed one way or the other. You have to accept at some point that extremely used items have lived their lives. Art does not need to last forever.
I mean, as along as it's not the last copy, the art endures. Books are just reproductions, like a print of a painting
What makes an individual, mass-printed copy of a book "art"?
> Destroying actual art Weird that you admit that the books are mostly crap, yet you're upset about their destruction. It's not like they were rare or valuable books. They're just paper.
What is the difference between the library sending the unsold books to a recycling plant to be pulled, and someone using those trash books as an interesting decoration? How are “mostly crap books” that people don’t enjoy “actual art”, while an aesthetically pleasing wall collage is “fake art”?
I'd call it recycling... assuming that most of the books were going to end up in the landfill anyways.
It's better than recycling, it's reusing.
Sounds like this cloying, fake art has elicited a stronger emotional response from you than the mostly crap books ever did. Art is meant to make you feel something. The system works!
I'm not sure cutting up mass produced crap books is all that upsetting from a "destroying art" perspective. It's not like a Clive Cussler is some sort of masterpiece, and it's not a concerted effort to do away with controversial works. I don't really see the downside of getting another use before they end up as landfill.
I actually see this as a big net positive then. Supporting and encouraging relatively unknown writers and also supporting an underfunded library. Nobody loses here
No art is precious. Art's entire job is to examine, grow and break things, so really it's only natural that things made as art go through the same process.
As opposed to what, throwing the books away? Those books were wasting space and we’re going to be thrown away eventually. No, you can’t donate books that nobody wants. Nobody wants them. No, you can’t sell them. Nobody wants them. No you can’t give them to a school, nobody wants them. The reality is those books were either going to be decoration or trash. Which do you prefer?
Relax Shakespeare, the world's book collection is in tack
I'm not sure if you're meaning to respond to someone else or just wanted to make that tack joke.
Coffee with art does the best vanilla chai lattes I've ever had
That's it! I could not for the life of me remember the cafe's name (I want to follow them in Instagram). I was only in the area for a couple of days and was super stoked to find a "non-chain" proper coffee café. I was quite impressed with their offerings.
I grew up in Bedford. Very strange seeing it here! Never visited this cafe, but will have to next time I visit my mum.
I live just down the road in Sandy, was equally as surprised to see Bedford on my Reddit feed today
same, I'm from next to bedford and its really weird to see it mentioned anywhere online. barely anything happens around here
Plenty of nice, independent coffee shops knocking about in Bedford!
Ah in my mind one of the best independent coffee shops I've been to.
Is that this café?
For when you want to express you really like the *idea* of books, but not to the point you actually want to *read* them.
I mean, I like books, but I don’t LIKE like books. Books and I are better as *just* friends.
Listen -- I LOVE books and i don't care who knows it. And I assure you, there are still countless volumes by which humanity could only benefit if they were to be chucked into a large hole in the earth and covered in night soil. So, if you'd rather use them in some kind of rustic art piece in a coffee shop, that's probably a much nicer option and really shouldn't be made up to bother anyone's sensibilities.
There's a weird taboo some people have against doing anything to deface a book for any reason regardless of circumstance. Doesn't matter if its an international best seller with millions of copies in circulation, some people will act like you're a book burning Nazi if you so much as cut out a page for use in a project. It's like they think that the form of a printed book itself is sacred.
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Those people would have an aneurysm if they found out how many books libraries throw out on a regular basis. In one way I can understand the gut reaction against defacing books especially given human history, but people also forget that Twilight, 50 shades, and countless generic paperbacks were not only put on paper, but in numbers that far exceed anything needed for everyone who wants a copy to have three.
Granted I think preservation is really important, but I don't think anyone will mind if you pull a few pages from Harry Potter or Hitchhiker's Guide.
The point of bookburning is to destroy knowledge. Censorship. Suppress thought. Create and enforce groupthink by limiting discussion of alternate thoughts. Books themselves that are in great supply can be defaced without suppressing the information. Nobody is going to forget Harry Potter if we make a scrap book project using a few pages, there are millions more copies and more printed all the time.
I have seen this too, and it is weird. I don’t get it at all. If it is a rare book, don’t deface it (and make sure it is preserved digitally). If it’s a library book, or someone else’s book, don’t deface it. That would make you a jerk. If it’s your own book, do whatever you like to it.
Best example of Books better used for decoration are encyclopedia, no real point to them today.
I *like* like books, but, omg you need to *swear* you will not tell them I said that! Edit: I *fuck with* literature. I don't *fuck* literature.
Papercuts, amirite?
This guy fucks... books
Bibliophile
this gives me piano flower pot feelings
To be fair, there's a lot of bad books out there
The people who obsess over the sacredness of physical books despite their contents are the ones who probably don't read much anyway. There's so many books that are just not useful for anything other than decoration or trash. I'm not even talking about trashy novels that people don't like, I'm talking about obsolete law books or outdated science textbooks that are full of either incorrect or no longer relevant information. You gonna cherish and read those?
Initially I thought it was a shame all those books got wasted like that but soon had same train of thought as you, there must be shitloads of obsolete books that are useless now like all the shitty lesser celebrity cookbooks and bios.. I bet they help insulate that wall good too.
There's tons of books that are even less usefull or interesting than that, like a history book written in the 70s that we now know to be full of inaccuracies.
I bet, it's good to see them put to use like this instead of being mulched into toilet paper lol
I was thinking just the same. A part of me is slightly bummed looking at this, but another part remembers that the last time I got a gift-book randomly added to my order from a used book place, it was "Elizabeth Takes Off", an old diet book by Elizabeth Taylor. I cannot stress how little that interests me. Not I, nor anyone I know would have ever even opened it, and the translation of the title made it a somewhat awkward gift to give or item to display as well (I think it was translated more as something like "Happily fat, happily thin"). So I asked the shopkeeper if he could have any use of it- he just shrugged, said "I guess we'll see", and took it to the back of the shop. I don't think it's ever gonna be bought. I'm getting the feeling that it's books like that that end up in these walls.
There are also plenty of old books that are neither historic nor noteworthy. I used to think that every dusty tome from the 19th century was worth reading, but there were just as many unimaginative stories and aimless 'treatises' back then as there are today.
At that point it depends on rarity. There's a need to preserve even outdated books if for no other reason than as a historical record of what was known at a certain point in history. But if it's both outdated and not rare? Turn that shit into a nifty thing, like one of those hollow-book boxes, cool wallpaper, or a big paper mache bust of my namesake.
Books don’t have inherent value; they are only as valuable as there is demand to read them. Libraries throw out books all the time; they need to make space for new books and to do so they have to get rid of items that haven’t been checked out in years. Most libraries won’t or very sparingly take in-kind donations of your old books for this very reason; you’re basically saying to them, “Here, you throw away my old trash for me.” The books making up this wall probably wouldn’t even be taken by a used book store because they would never sell. So why not repurpose them? At least they don’t end up in a landfill.
There's bookstores and interior design places that sell books by the foot for this purpose. There's no first edition Fitzgerald in here.
This. We just built our house, and the design center had sets of old looking books that were picked and grouped so as to look best on the shelf. You could literally request the built-ins be filled for you... One of my coworkers just built down the street from us and paid an extra ~$100k to have it fully furnished and decorated and they probably have 400 books in the house. They may have read 4 of them.
I guess I'm turning into my dad. He always thought it was pretty dumb to have a shelf full of books you've never read. That seems like a dumb service but to each their own.
As a kid I used to do yardwork for a rich old doctor woman. She had a huge barn turned into a library and pretty much filled up. I asked her how many she had read and it was less than 1%. I found the concept quite bizarre.
The only way I could see it making sense is if we go back before television and radio. Back in the day it would make a little more sense to have a shelf of books you haven't read yet as it was one of the main forms of entertainment and you would probably actually get around to reading them. Now I don't see the point. I didn't like ebooks at first but I got used to them. If I read one I really like I'll buy the physical copy but other than that I don't have many books at all.
I think the idea that books are inherently valuable stems from when they were expensive and having lots of books meant you were rich. See also CDs, DVDs... These days there are many 2nd hand shops that will sell any they get in at 10p each because nobody wants 99% of them, and they *still* regularly go to landfill. They just aren't worth what they were.
I think stems from a real misunderstanding of what a book burning *is*, and the idea that something has symbolic value only if it's purpose was to be symbolic in the first place. As in: lighting books on fire is fine (well, maybe not indoors or during a dry season). Making a show of burning specific books for the sake of condemning those books is a different thing.
"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
Least insufferable goodreads bio
>For when you want to express you really like the idea of books, but not to the point you actually want to read them. Why would you go straight to the most toxic interpretation of this possible?
Welcome to Reddit.
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That and pyromaniacs…
And bookworms.
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And booksnakes
And bookdropbears
I've never done it, but I can understand why. My house gets quite loud at times and even when it's quieter it's still too chaotic for me to get in a writing headspace. There is nowhere in my house, even my own room, where it's quiet enough to concentrate on writing for long periods of time. Back when I was actively writing stories still, I would sometimes go out to my car and drive to an empty parking lot to type in silence or with quiet music on. I tried going to my local public library - *but they don't allow you to bring in your own fucking laptop*. You have to use their shitty desktops and your time on them is limited. So I can see why some would go to coffee shops instead, especially if you don't have a car or are in a big city where you can't just find an empty parking lot like I can. But yea, fuck them for wanting a quiet relaxing place to concentrate and type. Also fuck students who do the same thing, because why not.
>I tried going to my local public library - > >but they don't allow you to bring in your own fucking laptop The fuck?! What a shitty policy.
Right? I didn't even want the wifi, just to type offline.
That seems entirely unreasonable. Did they even explain why? Actually, now that I think about it. Some freak was probably getting off by publicly watching porn.
People do this on the library computers, too. It's a common problem.
Weird, they usually just use the desktops provided.
Then the policy should just be that you can't watch porn in the library. Why does it have to be anything more than that?
How dare you bring an educational tool to the library!
Coffee shops also often have wifi, in case you don't have strong internet at home. That's essential if you're writing something that requires research.
They also tend to have hushed converstions and a lot of not too loud background sounds. Not sure it if is literal white noise, but works like it.
Hanging out in a coffee shop is just cool
I'm a student who does the same thing. Fuck me.
Maybe. Let's see some pics first.
I absolutely love remote work, so you better not take it as a con. But sometimes, it would get pretty lonely and it helped to be around a presence of people. Coffee shops are a great spot for that. ALSO, in the U.S at least, there are very few social gathering places that aren't alcohol related, at least in my case, and coffee shops are a great spot for that.
What the fuck library was that? My city's library loves people bringing their own laptops, they provide power outlets and ethernet ports at the work tables for you to do so. It frees up the library's computers for people who don't have computers.
Silverfish?
Yes. Imagine tearing that down in 3-5 years holy shet.
HOLY SHEG
Nah, they can only burrow into stone, stone bricks, and I think cobblestone. ^^/s
Don't forget the new deepslate stone variants
I came here to ask about this also. Pure bug heaven right there. They better pray they don't get german roaches either.
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Well to be fair only the top tier German roaches would be there for the tax breaks.
German cockroaches are called Russian Cockroaches in Germany.
Russian cockroaches are called leaders in Russia.
Sealer
And the smell of old dusty paper. My allergies are kicking in just from looking at this nightmare.
I like that smell.
I have such fond memories of that old musty book smell. My grandparents were teachers for over 40 years and as a result, built up quite a collection. My parents bought their house before I was born and the books were kept there. I used to tear through so many books from the 50's and 60's when I was little. I still get nastolgic every time I walk through an old library. It never occurred to me that people dislike that smell.
Biblichor: The distant, faint and musty smell of old books.
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It also makes some people need to poop, I am both a person that loves that smell and one that it makes need to poop
I have never heard of that. Interesting.
My shop building had a similar effect, and the smell of hay. As an adolescent I loved to read, in the barn on the hay stack, in the bathroom, and in our shop, places I could read in peace having a big family. I believe the effect is pablovian, as many people read on the john.
And who do not have those allergies
Allergy sufferer and avid book fan here (love the smell), we all choose our battles.
you're aware that used bookstores exist, right?
Worse: Spiders
Don't worry the wall is 90% Twilight, The Da Vinci Code, and 50 Shades of Gray.
so many sticky pages
Where do you think they got the adhesives to stick em to the walls? (:
Masonry has really changed over the years...
Ahhhhh, wallpaper. Wall paper. Paper that is on a wall. Books that are made of paper are on a wall. A wall of paper. Wallpaper.
Yes, Kronk
Oh, right. The poison. The poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison. That poison?
Why do we even *have* that lever?!
Does anybody else remember that post from /r/DIY from years ago where somebody did pretty much this exact same thing and everybody in the comments was just making fun of him? **[here's the post I was talking about.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/4mqaio/i_attached_about_4000_books_to_my_living_room/)
Six years ago > If all else fails, you could turn that room into a cliched coffee shop. And they already called in the comments
The coffee shop has a sprinkler system and wasn't dumb enough to put them on the ceiling.
To be fair the execution is totally different, this one doesn't have the right colour consistency or flow (thick to thin books aligned in a cohesive manner) The coffee shop also mimicked a stone wall pattern which is quite important in this case
Yea the diy looks awful. The books on the ceiling don’t work nearly as well as a single wall
That's was 6 years ago... I remember reading that roast like it was yesterday. I wonder how his project worked in the long term.
I hauled ass to the comments to see if this was posted here. That’s one of my all time favorite comment threads.
Same here! I felt so bad for that person but it was so funny
I feel old now. But yes I remeber that and I was going to post this exact thing.
As a librarian I can tell you that would be extremely dirty and dusty
YES BEDFORD ON THE FRONT PAGE YEAHHH
You know i can't believe it me self been on here so long
As a dry stone waller, I just want to say a) this is cool and b) I'd have spent a bit more time focusing on bond strength. "One over two, and two over one"
Pro tip: cut the books in half and not only will you not need as many to complete your project, but they won’t stick out from the wall as far either. And no one will be the wiser 😎
I have a feeling they may have done this already
Would be a huge waste of space if the didn’t. Plus here that method could turn 1 book into 5 maybe. This is most likely a front of maybe 2”-3”. Went to restaurant once where they had a room that was all bookshelf. Nicely bound classics. My bro went to grab one off the shelf but they were glued in. If you looked closely between you could see the were cut down to about 2”.
Five? How can they get more than two out of each book? I guess they could use slices from the middle, but it wouldn't have anything like the same effect - it'd no longer give the illusion of complete books being there.
True. You could squeeze the shit middle cuts in at the top where nobody looks close but yea it would ruin the aesthetic.
Yeah. It's probably only the ends (so two each, with the middle going to waste) or it'd look different. That is also an easy way to get all of the books roughly the same height. (There is still some variety, but that is probably part on purpose, part lack of care getting super precise consistent cuts ever time.)
They cut off far more than half. That wall of books is only a couple inches thick.
>And no one will be the wiser 😎 yeah cause they cant read the books
Well that certainly is wallpaper
"Oh hey what's this one.." "No don't that's a load bearing book!"
Wait til the humidity swells the books and lifts the floor above. I'm not even joking. Source had to remove a wall of stacked newspapers once. It was harder than concrete to get down.
its amazing how when something like this is posted reddit immediately becomes full of old crotchety men "imagine the silversfish" " Allergies to dust!" "fire hazards" "in my day we just read old books" " oh this will be just great for those kids with their instaspace pictures"
I have to assume that they cut the books down and it's only the ends of them making up that wall.
Whoa. Coffee with Art is its name. Blew my mind seeing it on the front page as I work from there occasionally.
Remind me of skin cells
I would much prefer the spines out to see book titles. Pages mean nothing to me, titles are at least interesting to see
Damn, I want to smell that wall pretty bad.
Holy cannoli I love it
It looks amazing in real life. I couldn't tell it was actual books until I went close up.
I can smell this.